Most handheld wireless communications devices, such as the BlackBerry™ by Research in Motion Limited, now have an alarm which a user can set to alert the user at a pre-selected time, usually by a sound or vibration.
The alarm functionality can be provided by a calendaring application such as MS Outlook™ which enables the user to set an alarm for an event by entering the time at which the event is scheduled to occur or, more commonly, to set the alarm to go off a certain period of time prior to the event. Furthermore, these calendaring applications enable the user to set a plurality of alarm times corresponding to various events during the day or night or to make certain alarms recur at regular intervals through the calendar (corresponding to regularly recurring events).
In addition to, or in lieu of, the full-feature calendaring application, some wireless communications devices include a very simple alarm clock function that allows a user to specify an alarm type (sound or vibration) and a time for triggering the alarm, thus mimicking the simple functionality of a portable alarm clock.
The foregoing technologies, be it the full-blown calendaring application or the simple alarm clock feature, require that the user of the wireless communications device set an alarm by specifying the precise time at which the user is to be alerted. For example, the user of the wireless device can set the alarm to wake up the user at a particular time in the morning or after a nap.
In some instances, however, such as napping on a commuter train, bus or subway, merely setting an alarm based on an expected or predicted time of arrival does not always guarantee that the alarm will sound when the user has actually reached the desired destination due to the possibility that the train, bus or subway is delayed (or that is arrives ahead of schedule at the desired destination). A wireless communications device that addresses this problem would be highly desirable.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.